THE

AUTHOR'S CHARGE

TO HIS

SATYRES.

Ye luck.lesse rymes, whom not unkindly spighte
Begot long since of truth and holy rage,
Lye here in wombe of silence and still night,
Untill the broyles of next unquiet age:

That, which is others' grave, shal be your wombe;

And that, which beares you, your eternall toombe. Cease, ere ye gin; and, ere ye live, be dead; And dye and live, ere ever ye

be borne : And be not bore, ere ye be buryed; Then after live, sith you have dy'd beforne', .

When I am dead and rotten in the dust,

Then gin to live, and leave when others lust.
For when I dye, shall Envie dye with mee
And lye deepe smother'd with my marble stone;
Which, while I live, cannot be done to dye;
Nor, if your life gin ere my life be done,

Will hardly yelde t’ awayt my mourning hearse,

But for my dead corps change my living verse.
What shall the ashes of my senselesse urne
Neede to regard the raving worlde above?
Sith afterwards I never can returne,
To feele the force of hatred or of love ?

Oh! if my soule could see their post-hume spight,

Should it not joy and triumph in the sight?
Whatever eye shalt finde this hatefull scrole
After the date of my deare exequies,
Ah! pitty thou my playning orphane's dole,
That faine would see the sunne before it dyes.

It dy'de before: now let it live agane :
Then let it dye, and bide some famus bane.

Satis est potuisse videri.

— beforne-before.

VIRGIDEMIARUM.

LIB. IV.